The Best, And Where To Get It

Welcome to our spring Dining Guide and the Best of Chicago. We hope you will keep this issue and refer to it when you get the urge to nosh, whether on juicy hamburgers or pristine sushi.

We sent out our critics and staff members with the mission to seek out the best the city has to offer. Their findings are certainly open to discussion and by no means all-inclusive.

If you would like to nominate your choices for ``Best of . . . ,`` please send a note to Best of Dining, c/o Carol Haddix, The Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.

BEST WAITER

SOURCE: By Jay Pridmore.

Waiters, even, or especially, the best of them, may not spend whole careers taking orders and uncorking wine. The best of this group often end up buying their own places: Le Perroquet, on Walton Street, and Carlos`, in Highland Park, are owned by former waiters, who no doubt were very good ones. Best waiter depends upon one`s taste. It would be folly to put any restaurant in front of Le Francais, in Wheeling, for service. George Christon and Bernard Guinaud are not too stiff, not too familiar, a little more formal with customers who require that, and a little friendlier with people who like laughing through a $100-a-plate dinner.

At Tango, 3170 N. Sheridan Rd., Oppy Moll, there for 11 years, has his clientele. People ask for his tables, and if they are not available, they wait for a night when they are. Oppy, an ebullient Dutchman, informs his customers what they ought to order. He rarely disappoints them.

Richard Trobough, waiter at Le Bordeaux for 13 years, is perhaps the master of the lunch trade. He moves patrons in and out with alacrity and grace. With many regulars he doesn`t bother with taking an order. They sit; an entree arrives; they pay and get going. It works because Trobough is friendly and Le Bordeaux`s prices reasonable.

COGNAC LIST

SOURCE: By Kristine N. Curry.

Exploring cognac or its spiritual cousins, armagnac and eau-de-vie

(various types of fruit brandies), is as easy as a trip to any of Gene Sage`s restaurants around Chicago.

The most extensive collection, 76 cognacs, 20 armagnacs and 21 eaux-de-vie, is at the 1255 N. State St. location of adjoining restaurants, Sage`s and Sage`s on State. Certainly this is one of the largest collections in the Midwest, if not the entire country.

The staff is not always good at pronouncing the Italian names, but at Spiaggia, 980 N. Michigan Ave., it has the cappuccino down pat. It never varies.

At Jerome`s, 2450 N. Clark St., the cup is large and the flavor is rich. At Color Me Coffee, the foam on top is extraordinary.

But the winner is Cafe Express, 615 Dempster St., Evanston, a little corner shop where customers can sit by themselves and write poems, then peruse the bulletin board for alternative lifestyles. The staff pays attention to the cappuccino as if it were the only offering. Very nearly it is. More is sold there than anywhere else in the area, according to the supplier who sells coffee to almost every place that would be a candidate for the honor.

PIZZA

SOURCE: By Jay Pridmore.

We are not retrogrades, or even sentimentalists, but the whole idea of new pizza creations can be a little tiring. We have ``deep dish,``

``stuffed,`` ``Chicago,`` ``New York,`` and others, of which everyone claims to make the best and to have won somebody`s contest. Now we have

``gourmet pizzas`` with goat cheese. One restaurant has ``Mexican pizza.``

Someone else even breaks an egg on a pizza and calls it quattro stagione, which is very good, by the way.

If you haven`t already guessed, our choice for pizza pie when only pizza pie will do is thin crust, traditional, no-nonsense and cheap: that at Father and Son Pizza, 2475 N. Milwaukee Ave. (252-2620). The crust is good and light without needing to be called ``flaky`` or some other epicurian adjective. The proportion of cheese to tomato sauce is right on the money--in other words there isn`t too much cheese. The room is clean and even homey without being the slightest bit trendy. No booze. Ya drink Coke with pizza, capisce?

PASTA

SOURCE: By Carol Haddix.

A tough one, this. Of all the ethnic groups in Chicago, the Italians have the edge on number of restaurants owned. And most of them serve good pasta.

How to pick out the best? First, eliminate those that serve commercially made pastas, although some of those can be very good. Next, find those that cook up their pasta properly so that it`s still firm to the bite and not mushy. It should have enough flavor to it so that it adds character to any pasta dish.